OS and other maps-deliberate mistakes?

[Cyril Haearn]

Heard or read this one before
Does the OS print wrong info so copiers can be identified?
Just mentioned in connection with the Parret Bridge

Are military installations and the like shown, what about gchq? That is quite easy to see on the ground

[pwa]

I have a feeling that the Russians know where GCHQ is.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/GCHQ/ ... 6?hl=en-GB
Google does.

[foxyrider]

Not sure if it was deliberate or not but local to me a grass airstrip was marked on the maps but didn't exist. Well it does, about a mile away where it is now marked.
Deliberate or just an error?

[Nigel]

Heard or read this one before
Does the OS print wrong info so copiers can be identified?
Just mentioned in connection with the Parret Bridge

Are military installations and the like shown, what about gchq? That is quite easy to see on the ground

Out of Doors(*) last week (or maybe week before) had an interview with an OS chap about mapping. In that I got the strong impression that the anti-copying deliberate mistakes was something done in the past, but not now done.


(* a really good BBC Radio Scotland programme, goes out every Saturday 6.30 to 8.00 in the morning).

[Psamathe]

Heard or read this one before
Does the OS print wrong info so copiers can be identified?
Just mentioned in connection with the Parret Bridge

Are military installations and the like shown, what about gchq? That is quite easy to see on the ground :wink:

I heard about it many years ago in the days when people purchased paperback maps of London (and other cities). A to Z or Bartholomew's or somebody. Report was on TV and they (or reporter) said and showed where they deliberately made small mistakes that didn't really impact anybody so they could detect if their maps were having their copyright violated.

Long long time ago though. I've not heard of OS doing that but I probably would not have noticed any such reports.

I did read that Google Earth has blanked out (or blurred or something) sensitive areas. Never checked any myself but with such otherwise global coverage it would seem a bit like flagging up a "sensitive area here".

Ian

[Cugel]

Heard or read this one before
Does the OS print wrong info so copiers can be identified?
Just mentioned in connection with the Parret Bridge

Are military installations and the like shown, what about gchq? That is quite easy to see on the ground

Perhaps they are part of The Matrix and all the map data is just a device to convince us that we aren't actually comatose & dreaming in some capsule from which the power of our life juices are drawn for unclear purposes? All our apparent cycling journeys are just a means to stimulate our encapsulated bodies to produce more power via leg-twitch, with the OS map providing us with the illusion that we're in The Dales or 7 miles SW of Newcastle Emlyn going up a rather steep valley-side?

This would ex[plain the flickering in the sky I noticed yesterday as we cycled our 'round about way to Arnside. On the other hand, it may just have been some seagulls crossing the sun.

Cugel

[pwa]

Heard or read this one before
Does the OS print wrong info so copiers can be identified?
Just mentioned in connection with the Parret Bridge

Are military installations and the like shown, what about gchq? That is quite easy to see on the ground

Perhaps they are part of The Matrix and all the map data is just a device to convince us that we aren't actually comatose & dreaming in some capsule from which the power of our life juices are drawn for unclear purposes? All our apparent cycling journeys are just a means to stimulate our encapsulated bodies to produce more power via leg-twitch, with the OS map providing us with the illusion that we're in The Dales or 7 miles SW of Newcastle Emlyn going up a rather steep valley-side?

This would ex[plain the flickering in the sky I noticed yesterday as we cycled our 'round about way to Arnside. On the other hand, it may just have been some seagulls crossing the sun.

Cugel

You've been eating that mouldy bread again. Have a lie down.

[bovlomov]

Over at least a couple of decades, the London AtoZ marked a Post Office at the bottom of my road. There wasn't one, and it must have caused a few wasted journeys. I wondered whether it was deliberate, but would they deliberately place errors that were likely to cause so much inconvenience?

[Postboxer]

Mentions on Wikipedia here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry

Including a half allegation that the Ordnance Survey discovered that the AA were copying their maps due to 'Mountweazels' though they claim it was just down to styling.

[sizbut]

Back in the 70's the Russian army had the best maps of the UK that you could get. They didn't waste time on spy satellites and the like, they just bought a full set of OS maps and copied them. But first they wrote on them what things really actually were. So the industrial estate south of Reading was correctly listed as the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. All made slightly pointless now we're in an age were the likes of AWE has a website.

Slightly different from deliberate mistakes is the need to change thing to keep people happy. Google deliberately alter their online maps based on where they think your browsing from. Basically to try and keep themselves out of the endless arguments on disputed territories and place names: https://www.jebruner.com/2016/06/geopol ... a-service/

My own recent bugbear has been with the Irish Ordnance Survey and the presence on their maps of ferry services that don't exist. It seems you can' get a boat from the Ring of Kerry to Dingle, but its there on paper. Grrr.

[Ben@Forest]

Including a half allegation that the Ordnance Survey discovered that the AA were copying their maps due to 'Mountweazels' though they claim it was just down to styling.

In 2001 the AA paid £20 million to the OS for copyright violations.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theg ... ndrewclark

[Cyril Haearn]

Maybe gchq is not gchq, who knows what is inside Mynydd Trydan?*

OS paper maps have revision dates, they showed closed railways which have since been reopened, and planned roads, digital mapping should be a big advance

* electric mountain near Llanberis

[sizbut]

I've always nursed a hope that our security services are actually good at their job, and the MI6 building in Lambeth will one day be discovered to just contain government storerooms for biscuits and loo rolls.

I did order some OS custom maps last month for the other halves birthday, centred on their house, and it was impressively up to date with things that have only appeared in the last couple of years.

[ChrisButch]

Including a half allegation that the Ordnance Survey discovered that the AA were copying their maps due to 'Mountweazels' though they claim it was just down to styling.

In 2001 the AA paid £20 million to the OS for copyright violations.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theg ... ndrewclark

More recently (and presumably this time with appropriate fees paid) the AA have produced a 'Walking map of the Central Lake District', which is nothing but a reprint of the area where the four sheets of the OS 1:25000 Lake District maps meet. This neatly offers the OS a way out of its embarrassment in planning its sheets in such a way that when walking on some of the most popular fells in the country you have to carry two (sometimes even three) bulky double-sided sheets (try turning over the central fold of one of those in a gale) to cover your day's route - one of the reasons (there are several others) why many find Harvey maps much more user-friendly.

[Cunobelin]

We used to have problems when they had the older street Maps, as we were not on them...... victors, delivery drivers all used to have issues